Learning Classics is a bit like putting on a magic pair of 3-D glasses. Once you start delving into the language and the culture, you'll start to see it all around you. This blog is a record of the club's journey through the worlds and language of ancient Rome and Greece... and through modern times, too, searching for the influence of classics all around us. You'll also be able to find vocab, home tasks, links and generally enlightening info here, too.

18 March 2016

An end-of-term treat today with a trip to the Arthouse Cinema and an exclusive GCA Classics Club screening of Clash of the Titans. A few diabolical liberties were taken with Ancient Greek mythology (who were those wood-faced people, exactly?!), but there was some stuff we recognised from our lessons. Here's my favourite bit (I do like a good baddie)...

A big thanks to the lovely people at the Arthouse (we got free popcorn, too!!!). Have a great Easter holiday, everyone, and see you in the new term.

13 March 2016

In this last 'proper' Classics Club of term, we not only recapped the preposition work we did last week, but also recalled our present tense and noun endings - this week on a theme of illness and the body, given that so much medical terminology comes from Greek and Latin. Hence we conjugated nauseare (to be sick), curare (to take care of) and valere (to be well), and declined medicus (doctor), serra (saw) and remedium (medicine). We're pretty much there with our present tense and our nominatives and accusatives, so next term we'll be moving on to more tenses and cases.

The second part of the lesson took the form of a game of body bingo. Using picture clues

A big cerebrum makes him cerebral

given on the board, students had to guess the English for the Greek and Latin body/medical words on their cards. Some, like dentes were easy to guess (from the clue, dentist), but others were a little trickier. Now we all know, though, how venter (stomach) gives us ventriloquist (person who can talk without moving their lips), and lacrima (tears) gives us lachrymose (tearful).

Next week is our end-of-term treat, a trip to the cinema to see Clash of the Titans: don't forget to return your permission slips. I'll bring sweets ;-)

06 March 2016

Our language warm-ups are getting really slick now: well done! I think we can safely say that we all know our present tense endings pretty well, and those nouns are looking pretty healthy too. It'll soon be time to shake things up a bit and add new verbs (irregular and imperfect) and noun cases (maybe a spot of genitive or dative?).However, our topic for this week was the Roman army. Many of us take it for granted that the Romans conquered the greater part of the Western World in the creation of their empire, but how often do we stop to think how or why? The reasons are many, but arguably the most important one (or at least the thing that gets a foot in the door) is the might that was the Roman army. We watched a few videos that demonstrated the techniques, equipment and psychology that made the Roman army one of the most dominant forces of all time:

We all now know what a quincunx is, and just how terrifying it must have looked to see coming toward you over a hill...

...and how equally effective an unseen rearguard manoeuvre can be in routing the enemy. And, of course, we got to see the famous testudo (tortoise) formation, that allowed a man-tank of soldiers to advance in relative safety.

miles est in, sub, pro, prope (he gets around)

We then took the opportunity to learn some prepositions (vital in any army manoeuvre!) with a certain Lego legionary. Following this was a written exercise in seeing how pervasive Latin prepositions are as prefixes in the English language. Just take trans (through), for example:transport, transference, transit, transaction, transatlantic, transcend, transcribe, translate, transfer, transform, transgression, transpire.Knowing Latin prepositions can give us a helping hand when we encounter English words we don't know, such as 'antechamber'.